BBC WM DJ: My tribute to Uncle Bill, TV's Jack Duckworth

TO MOST of the watching world, actor Bill Tarmey really was Jack Duckworth.

A pigeon-fancying, workshy window cleaner.

A loveable rogue who would cock a deaf ‘un to long-suffering wife Vera, played by Liz Dawn.

But that wasn’t the man BBC WM’s breakfast show host Pete Morgan knew.

To him, the soap star – who died on holiday yesterday in Tenerife aged 71 – was simply Uncle Bill, one of the family.

The star, the eldest of five children, was the brother of Pete’s mum Anne.

“Of all the family, I was the one Bill would talk to because I’m the only one working in the same kind of business,” he said.

“And even though I’ve just turned 40, he would still call me young man. I last saw him two months ago when we all had Sunday lunch together.

“I also interviewed Bill when he left Coronation Street in 2010 and we’d planned to do something else, but that can’t happen now.”

BBC WM breakfast presenter Pete Morgan

A life-long heavy smoker, Bill suffered a minor heart attack following a bypass operation in 2002.

Although he had recently needed oxygen assistance, Pete said Bill only quit the Street to be with his son, Carl, now in his mid 40s.

“Carl has responded well to treatment for a brain tumour,” said Pete.

“But it’s acknowledged it will ultimately kill him – and Bill didn’t want to do anything except be there for his son.

“Before that his health frustrated Bill because he liked to go out and was asked to do so many things.”

Pete said the other joy of Bill’s job was working with Liz Dawn.

“They were together for so long and were friends off the Street as well as on it. When she left, he began to think ‘I’m going to knock this on the head’ because he would no longer be working all day with Liz.”

Pete also revealed that Bill admitted to being ‘terrible’ at learning his lines.

“He would tell me he wasn’t even an actor.

“In the end, he was learning his lines by recording whole scripts on to a cassette which he played in the car.

“He’d leave his own lines blank and try to fill them in while he was driving.

“Even at the height of his fame, he was always still Uncle Bill.

“He still lived with his wife Ali in a modest bungalow at the end of a row of terraced houses.

“They’d been there 20 years because it was a part of Manchester he liked.